DCU: Sheharazade
by princessebee
Summary: Amber, a young street smart heroin addict, finds herself in the clutches of The Joker one evening. Can she make it through the night? Warnings for violence, language and generally strong content. No romance, no sex and no Mary Sues.
1. Chapter 1

_I'm aware the narrative does assume some previous knowledge of Amber. I hope it doesn't make it impossible for newcomers to engage with her._

**ONE**

Gotham City was a hellhole.

A modern day Rome seemingly eternally perched on the precipice of an almighty fall; it festered relentless and enduring in spite of all, swollen with crime, corruption and vice.

Its magnificent architecture, world renowned universities, and celebrated museums and galleries lapped constantly by an endless tide of debauchery and excess. From all across the world people gathered, melting into a great mess of diversity and desperation, building and tearing apart all atop of each other in a constant struggle to keep their nostrils above the mania that plagued the city.

It was at once beautiful and unbearable; like the light refracted off of a brass pot in the blistering sun. Or like staring into the sun itself. Stunning and vicious. Difficult to tear away once you got hooked, sure to be permanently damaging if you couldn't.

Amber loped down the streets of Newtown, a burning cigarette between two fingers, her scuffed boots thudding dully on the pavement. She wasn't even sure why the hell she'd come to Gotham, of all the god-forsaken places to be, or why she stayed. Like New York on some hella-powerful steroids, the world's greatest city was also its worst, and for most of the same reasons.

_Liar_, she thought. She did know why she had come – to get away from Raphael for a while, and all the uncomfortable intensity and severe fucked-upedness of that relationship. She'd hopped into the first car that had picked her up, not caring where it was going, so long as it was out of New York.

So. That's how she'd ended up in Gotham.

As to why she stayed –

Well, as it turned out, Gotham had the best smack she'd had in four years.

The autumn breeze was cool, but not unpleasantly so. The weather had just started to turn, the city still humid enough that her sleeveless hoodie and short purple Cookie-Monster dress was sufficient, its flared skirt skimming the tops of her thighs like the foam of a berry milkshake, her freckled arms long, lanky spokes by her side, rather than wrapped up and around her bony chest.

She sucked in the last of her cigarette, pulling it right back into the roach, then flicked it into the gutter, pushing a long strand of red hair out of her face just as the phone in her shoulder bag began to vibrate.

She pulled a face, freckled forehead furrowing together in a mean knot about her sunken eyes. Only one person that could be.

She got the phone out of her bag anyway, as if it needed to be confirmed, checking the caller ID.

Yep. Raphael. Jesus.

Well, she had been gone more than two weeks. And she hadn't really told him…

Hadn't really planned it.

It had happened one early morning, just as the sun began to bleed over the horizon, when he'd been lingering in the frame of her window and she'd been – she winced – kinda, sorta, maybe clinging to him a little and laughing too. And he'd smiled at her with those big, startling, stupidly intense brown eyes all bright and fixed on her face and she'd frozen a little inside, her guts coiling up on themselves. And when he'd embraced her, she'd pushed her lips against his neck and felt safe.

After he'd gone she'd sat on the window ledge, looking out of the squat over the rooftops, bathed gold in the morning light, for a few moments. Then she'd picked up her bag, shoved her gear in it, walked outside and headed straight for the nearest road out of town.

Now she scowled at the phone, which had stopped ringing only to begin again a few seconds later. Why the hell had she ever gotten one? Life had been a lot simpler before she'd given into his insistence and bought the stupid thing from a pawnshop. She passed a garbage bin and dumped the phone inside, it making a muffled thwunk as it clunked against the tin insides. Feeling considerably lightened, she smiled a little and shoved her hands into the hoodie pockets, falling into something of a hop, skip and a jump, her feet beating the sidewalk.

Newtown, the lower East side; a breath away from the infamous Crime Alley. Not the ideal place for a young lady to be walking, unaccompanied and scantily dressed, unless she was a certain sort of girl.

The sort of girl Amber happened to be.

Though the night encroached about her on all sides, though it was constantly pierced with the wail of sirens and the distant shrieks of urban war, though the crumbling buildings lining the streets housed the unseen malevolent presences of a hundred predators waiting for the hour to strike, her gait was confident and her manner disaffected.

There, she was at home.

Of course, she understood what Gotham City was all about. With the worst crime rate in the world, the highest murder rate, a skyline about which notoriety hung like a cloud, it really should've intimidated even the hardened likes of her. But, she reasoned, the statistics were pushed up by the freaks and loonies who this city seemed to breed like roaches.

And how many people really encountered any of that lot?

After all – it had been two weeks. And she hadn't caught sight of so much as the flapping cape of the city's supposed protector.

Not that she'd been looking.

In real terms, Gotham was no worse than New York, she reasoned. Its dealers, thugs, brutes, and criminals were no more vicious and no more powerful, and at any rate, she spoke their language and knew how to trade. The whackos – the so-called "super-villains" as the media dubbed them _(stupid fucking term, made her think of Mikey and his bloody comics)_ were the only ones to really worry about.

And what were the odds of actually encountering one of them?

"_Misery's the river of the world, everybody row, everybody row", _she hummed below her breath, turning into a lone twenty-four hour convenience store, a radioactive square of light on a dark corner, hitting the candy aisle and picking up bags of Starburst and Skittles, big blocks of Cadburys.

She'd worked the streets hard the last few nights and all she wanted to do now was spend a few nights in her hotel room getting stoned.

She paid for her purchases and left the shop, turning down a long finger of an alleyway, boots splashing in something unspeakable. She was already pleasantly numb, having shot up in the dank public toilets of the Giordano Botanical Gardens and she thought there'd be something mind-numbing on the tiny, flickering television set in the grotty, cramped room she was paying twenty bucks a night for. When she'd first checked in, the clerk had taken one look at her and advised her there was a surcharge per guest so she'd been doing all her jobs on the streets and in cars, which saved the hassle of kicking them out of the room afterwards anyway.

"_There are a few things I never could believe… a woman when she weeps, a merchant when he swears, a thief who says he'll pay, a lawyer when he cares…" _She was following an unravelling thread of thought in her head, spinning backwards, not hearing the soft whistle which had taken up the chorus of the song she sang quietly, head nodding forward against the heaviness of the drug, suddenly unbearably hot and uncomfortable in the hoodie, wrenching it off.

She reached her hotel, on a silent, stark and deserted stretch of street, its blue neon _ftzing_ steadily above her like a mosquito. She fumbled in her bag for the keys, keen to be inside now and ensconced in the damp-smelling room with its awful and slightly greasy chintz bedspread. The hotel had a "security" door, a thick glass thing that was constantly being kicked, slammed and jimmied, with the result that the key had to be jiggled and twisted just so in the lock.

She was too off her face to manage the task right at that moment; the key seemed to stick harder than usual, refusing to turn either way and in a sudden surge of fury she shook the door violently and let out a string of expletives:

"You mother fucking sonuvabitch what the fuck is the fucking problem, goddamn cheap piece of shit."

And kicked at the glass with one scratched boot.

"Now, now, such language. On a public street. From a lady."

She jumped at the voice, not having sensed the presence of the person behind her. The reprimand was delivered with an amused, and slightly malicious, tone of voice and for some reason, a chill went down her spine.

A second later and she tore the key back out of the lock, covertly positioning it between her middle and index finger so it pointed outwards like a blade, then turned to give the smart-arse a piece of her mind.

But when she saw the man leaning up against the lamppost, not five feet away from her, all retorts died on her lips.

He was unusually tall, his height only amplified by the long leanness of his figure. He was impeccably dressed in a fitted wool suit, its style one that had been the height of fashion in the thirties, except that it was a shocking shade of purple, offset by the brilliant turquoise of his silk shirt and the vivid orange of his cravat and waistcoat. His hands were jammed casually into his pockets, one ankle crossing the other in shined black shoes and soft, white leather spats. A purple fedora with a turquoise hatband was perched upon his head, its brim pulled down over his face.

But it was not enough to conceal the shocking bone white-ness of his flesh or the lick of vibrant green hair at his neck; it was certainly not enough to mask the smile that contorted his face, a mirthless, awful grin that struck her with a sudden sense of unreality.

_It's a costume_, she thought frantically, ignoring its perfection, the key slipping in her hand, the wind whipping her skirt up in a sudden rush that set goose pimples scattering across her skin. _It's gotta be. Just some jok – some asshole trying to be clever. Don't let him know he got ya._

So instead of doing what she should've, she reached into her bag with trembling hands and pulled out a cigarette, lighting it to up to feign nonchalance.

_Statistics, girl. How many people actually encounter one of these kooks? You'd have to be one in a million and you've already used your turn on Raphael. Just be cool. It's just some nutjob's idea of a game._

She leaned up against the security door, crossing one skinny leg over the other, mirroring his posture, and blew out a gust of smoke. "You looking for a good time, baby?"

When his grin grew wider, she knew she'd made a mistake. It split the edges of his face and beneath the shadow cast by the brim of his hat; his eyes glittered with something like hunger.

"Indeed I am." He replied softly. "And you are _just_ the very thing."

Finally she did what she should've done to begin with, and broke into a run.

She was quick and agile, but his slouch was deceptive. He'd been waiting for it and leapt forward, catching her by the tendrils of her stupidly long hair, yanking her back with a savageness that made her yelp, her scalp suddenly stinging in a hundred places.

She turned, kicking out desperately, but he dodged and laughed. It was the laugh that sent her spiralling into panic then, a maniacal, hideous sound that split the night like a thunderclap, startling the hope out of her.

"Relax, honey thighs, it'll be easy." He hissed and suddenly a cloud of something green billowed in her face. In shock she sucked in a breath.

The darkness then was absolute.


	2. Chapter 2

**TWO**

There was a woodpecker knocking against the side of her skull.

It was pecking steadily at the bone, drilling a hole to get at the soft moistness of her brain.

Her throat was coated with bristly caterpillars, puncturing the delicate pink flesh with needle sharp points on their furry backs.

Rats gnawed at her wrists and ankles with sharp, indifferent teeth, steadily scratching away her flesh.

She whimpered, tried to jerk, send them all flying. But she couldn't move. She was paralysed.

In terror, her eyes flew open and the fluorescent light above her seared her eyeballs like acid.

It was blotted out then like a cloud over the sun, by a leering death mask of a face, deep-set purple eyes sparkling with malignant pleasure.

"Rise and shine, lumpling. So glad you rejoined us. Wouldn't want to start the fun without you."

The face disappeared again and she was once more blinded by the long rectangular light above.

It had not been a woodpecker, she began to realise through the fog that hung over her thoughts, it had been his gloved fingers, drumming a staccato beat on the surface of whatever she was lying on, right by her ear. There were no rats and no caterpillars, she was tied down, tightly and her throat was screaming dry.

She tried to shift and the ropes rubbed painfully against her. She could tell their coarseness had already started to sand away her thin flesh from the sting. She swallowed, tried to work up saliva to moisten her mouth, gave her head a brief jerk and watched her vision spot out as the sudden movement caused a wave of giddiness to overwhelm her.

"Ah, ah, ah," there was something hard and bracing around her jaw then, holding her head still. "No passing out now. It's okay, sweetie, really. You're all fixed into place here in my little hidey-hole. The boring part is all over. Nothing left to be done. So you can stay awake now." It was his hand, long bony fingers impossibly strong and spreading out over her cheeks, like the goddamn face-hugger aliens.

This was real.

It was impossible and unlikely and statistically improbable.

But it was happening. And it was happening to her.

Amber had faced death by violence three times, an unusual number, in her short life. She'd been beaten and raped and nearly subjected to weird scientific experiments. And somehow, it had almost gotten to seem normal, no big deal.

But this – this was a new horror. Her captor's reputation far preceded him and she couldn't even begin to imagine what he had in store for her. She was constricted with terror, her body straining up against the ropes which fixed her to whatever it was she was lying on, muscles twitching feverishly as her eyes rolled in her head, trying to see beyond the long white stretch of roof above her, a strange whine hissing out of her throat.

Somewhere, in the room beyond her, The Joker hummed cheerily to himself, and metal clinked against glass. _Oh God, what was he doing?_

The air was still and slightly pungent, a strange metallic tinge to it. She twisted her head to one side, straining to get some sense of where she was being kept. A white-tiled wall was the only thing that met her gaze, splotched in several places with an odd, rust-coloured stain that travelled over the tiles in streaks, dotted at its perimeters. Her vision narrowed, blackened at the edges, then zoomed out once more and she fought off the wooziness, concentrating on the stains to help her keep focus.

_Like from a spray-can_, she thought crazily of the pattern, _but why would anyone – _

The realisation was like an anvil dropped straight on her chest.

_Notpaintnotpaintnotpaintnotpaint._

The metallic scent to the air suddenly made sense.

She whimpered again and bucked up against her restraints with such force the bench she was on rattled beneath her, whining like a dog in the strange echoing white room.

Suddenly The Joker's face was beside hers, his breath tickling against her cheek as he breathed: "You can scream, you know. In fact, I'd like you to. Makes me feel appreciated. " She felt his fingertips in her hair, kneading gently at her scalp. He was speaking to her as though she were a lover. "Indeed, I hope that you will. Well – I _know_ that you will. Long before the night is done, my dear. I take great pride in my work, you know. "

Amber took in a great shuddering breath and forced herself to think. She'd faced death before. She'd been tied up and helpless before. But before… before… someone – _Raphael_ – knew where she was. Knew where to find her. Had her back. The Joker wanted her to scream. If that was so, then she was far, far away from anyone or anything that could help her. There would be no one to hear her. No one to come.

No one would ever know.

There was the sound of something sharp being scraped across something rough.

_Sharpening a knife? A saw? A fucking axe? God she couldn't see, he could strike at any second, oh shit, oh Christ…_

She'd shot up. Not so long ago. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad… maybe it would keep her dull. It would keep her numb. It wouldn't hurt so much. God, she wanted another shot, another shot. Did he know? Where was her bag? Had he looked inside, did he understand what the scabs on her arms meant? Would he go… _harder_?

"Wh-wh-whu-why m-me?" she stammered, the sudden humiliation of a hot prickling behind her eyes. "Wha-wha-what do y-you whu-want with m-me?"

"Whu-whu-whu-what do I want with you?" His voice rang out against the tiled walls like a maniacal bell, vicious with merriment. "Does it muh-muh-matter, baby cakes? I've got you."

She licked her lips, flexed her fingers and shut her eyes against the harsh blare of the fluorescent light, red spots dancing behind her eyelids as she forced every ounce of her not-unimpressive will to travel backwards in time, two years ago, to the time when she'd gotten fixated, as she frequently did, on a particular theme in her literary perusing. Psychology. It had lasted three months and she'd devoured almost everything Ronnie's had on offer on the subject. In one, there'd been a whole chapter on this nut – and she remembered – yes, God, she remembered – he was _obsessed_, utterly fixated on – on –

"Is it something you're planning for Bu-Batman?" she managed hoarsely and sensed, rather than saw, him fix his gaze on her from wherever he hovered beyond, tinkering with tools that clicked and clanked against each other. _Christ what was that, it sounded like – what did he have – did he just plug something in? Flick a switch?_ He was spending such a long time in preparation, it seemed rather odd, hadn't he said the 'boring part' was – and then she realised the whole thing was a performance he was staging, connecting his behaviour to the 'taste for the theatrical' that had been cited in that book, that in this instance _she_ was the audience and that everything he did was slowly but surely building up her anticipation, tightening the tension, the fear and terror she felt like some goddamned suspense play in which she was an unwitting participant.

He sighed and took a step somewhere to the left beyond her head, his heels clicking on the ground. "Are you as misguided and misinformed as the rest of the cretins?" he enquired despairingly. "Convinced every breath I take is some sort of sonnet to the Dark Knight? That every blink of my eyes or crack of my knuckles is an ode of devotion? Perhaps that every time I gotta piss it's some kinda post-modernist prayer to Tall, Dark and Gruesome?"

He sounded so very – _conversational_ – and somehow, it terrified her even more.

He took another step and he was directly behind her now, if she strained her eyeballs right back in their sockets, she could just catch the tips of his green hair, towering above her, the length of him a dark cliff disappearing into the light.

"I'm so sorry to disappoint you, pet, but the truth is your fate will not be so grand as all that. No, the part you have to play in my little theatre is a minor-role. A walk-on part, I'm afraid, although I'm sure you'll perform it beautifully. " Suddenly, his gloved hands were pressing into her shoulders and she gasped. "In fact, I don't mind saying, you were born for it. Don't get a big head, now. " He began to stroke upwards, from her shoulders up both sides of her neck to where her jaw line began, a soft, flicking movement that might've been pleasurable under other circumstances. "The truth is I'm taking a bit of a backstage part myself for the time being, but it does get so very, very boring being out of the limelight. You know. Especially when you're as used to it as I. So I was just taking an evening stroll – as one does on an evening as lovely as this one – and I happened to catch sight of you, going nowhere and determined to get there and I thought – _ah, exquisite caprice, you know that I cannot say no to your beckoning call, you tempt me and I succumb and tonight especially you knew just what I needed to put a smile on my face_. And so – " here he made a little gesture with one hand, his fingers curling delicately above her eyes, " – here you are."

Everything was a production. He'd taken his time saying it, taking care to put the right emphasis and nuance on each word, every point he was trying to make. She used the time to dig up more scattered, half-whole memories of that article_ (why did it have to be so long ago, why hadn't she paid more attention?). _All that she kept turning up were the words _sociopath, Batman, zero empathy, the world his stage, Batman, vanity, previously unseen mental disorder, Batman, grandiosity complex, egotistical, Batman, Batman, Batman…_

_Egomaniac. The kook is a narcissist._ She thought flurriedly. _Keep him talking about himself. So long as he's talking, he's not doing anything – _else

"Then – what – what do you want?" She croaked. "I've done lotsa kinky stuff, you know. Heaps. You don't have to make me. We can negotiate this, honey." She was stalling for time. She sensed The Joker was not after sex. Rape, she could've handled. No, what he had in store for her – whatever it was, it was going to be far worse…

He snorted, a disgusted and insulted sound. "Please. How very mundane. You think so little of me?" There was an air of wounded melodrama to the question and she paused, wondering how to proceed.

"I – sup – suppose I can't imagine what someone like you would want with someone like me otherwise – if it's not got to do with – with the Batman – or with – well, you know, I mean, you do, don't you – what I am."

He didn't answer her straight away. Her breath came in short, sharp gasps as the silence grew in the little white room. In the quiet there rose a soft hum, the burr of electricity, she realised. He _had _switched something on.

Then his hands were upon her again.

He caressed her almost lovingly, the soft kid of his glove like a kiss as it passed over her face, his fingers twining in her hair. He ran a hand down her neck and over her sternum. Stricken with fear, her every nerve jangling and on alert she felt a shudder pass through her at the touch, it was so revoltingly gentle.

"There is such a poignant beauty in your ugliness," he confided in her. "It caught my eye, I confess. I was quite taken with you. You just look so… so very dry and wrung out. Like an old, ragged and stained dishtowel that's been used too many times and not washed enough. And so young, too. To look like that and be so young. I knew you'd give me a few laughs."

Suddenly, he was in her line of sight, disappearing far above her like a pillar, his head now obscuring the light above her, so that his face was blocked entirely in shadow, the faintest gleam of his teeth and the sparkle in his purple eyes visible. He abruptly bent over and cupped her face in both hands, pressing his long nose against hers, his icy lips brushing against her forehead. "Have I mentioned how very happy I am to have found you? I was getting so very, very bored."

If she were another sort of girl, Amber would've been in tears by then, humiliated and certain of her death. She was not that sort of girl. She swallowed away the urge to panic at his touch and set her jaw.

"But," he chirped, standing back up straight, "I have this odd feeling you're trying to distract me and it's really time we got onto the main event, don't you think?"

Her stomach sank like a stone to the small of her back and she began to wheeze again.

"You're not stupid", he acknowledged with an air of generosity. "And you're a tough little cookie. You haven't pleaded with me. Yet. But you are neither so clever nor so experienced as I am, in these matters. But how thoughtless of me. You should really be able to see what's coming. It makes it all the more exciting, don't you think?"

He pressed his fingers lightly to the surface she was on and the world tipped forward. She was on some sort of gurney, one that could be swivelled around and set vertical. The rest of the room rushed into view, bare and plain, nothing but white tiles – and –

Directly in front of her was a full-length mirror.

She was naked. She hadn't realised it before, so still was the air, so numb her body. She hung, the strain of her eighty-five pounds suddenly all on her wrists, bound tight down by harsh rope. It helped only a little her ankles were similarly restrained. Spread-eagled, her thin body looked pathetic and sick. She could see every rib bone that protruded from her torso, the sharpness of her hipbones jutting out. She was a skeleton wrapped in flesh. The skin that covered her from the top of her forehead to her breast bone, spreading out over her shoulders and running the length of her arms was completely covered in soft, orange freckles, clustered so close and tightly together they were almost one block of colour, the rest of her body shockingly white by comparison. She was close enough to the mirror to see the scarred flesh of her inner elbows, the purple-red of the track-marks, the puffiness of her hands and fingers and the needle punctures there. Her calves and ankles were similarly swollen, each tendon stretching down her foot like spokes, the skin between her toes a mess of scabs and track marks. Her face was drawn and pinched, her cheekbones sharp points on her face, her eyes sunken deep into her skull and obscured by black shadows, her pale lips chapped and dry.

She was rarely confronted so absolutely by her own ugliness.

Despite herself, she reacted, a choked little sound in her throat, flinching back against the bench.

The Joker had stepped back to watch her and he smiled then, evidently satisfied.

"I think… I'll leave your eyes until last." He said musingly.

She bit down on her tongue as he moved behind her again, bit down on the entreaty that had sprung up, the mindless need to beg for her life. _It won't make a difference_, she told herself frantically, _he's going to kill you. And you never beg. _She could see parts of him behind her in the mirror, the flicking tail of his coat, an arm as it reached for something. Then she heard the screech of wheels and a cart came around into view, a medical cart, gleaming silver-steel, covered in a spotless white cloth. Her eyes bulged in her head when she saw what lay on that cloth – everything her feverish mind had imagined and more. All manner of vicious cutting devices and clamps, some sort of tens unit, a box of makeup, pins and needles, cigarettes and shaving cream, a shallow bowl filled with crushed glass and several electrical tools, finally two or three vials filled with something pale bean green.

"Voila!" The Joker intoned somewhat solemnly and laughed again, that crazed sound that came straight from Hell. Then he regarded her somewhat fondly.

"Such a pure example of the grotesquery of life. My dear, you embody the very essence of the grand joke!"

She felt the sudden urge to spit at him, to swear and curse him. _What fucking joke, you fucking idiot! You're the only goddamned joke! Fuck you! Fuck you!_

She was too busy trying to control her bladder. She didn't want him to know just how scared she was. She was Amber, fuck him. She was never scared. Not like this.

She could smell her own body odour, sour and sharp, steadily rising in intensity from the sweat that had broken out all over her, bitter as crushed aspirin, a junkie's sweat. It was betrayal enough.


	3. Chapter 3

**THREE**

The Joker picked up the box of makeup and moved over to her, stroking a brush in a brick-red powder.

"Oh, of course I can't deny that I hope _he_ will find your body and know it's my handiwork." He said conversationally. "Why try to hide it? Yes, I do. A little love letter, I suppose you could call it. They'll all write you off, of course – the cops that is – what's one more dead hooker in this burg after all. But not _him._ Oh, no. _He'll_ cry for you. Yes the Dark Knight will weep for even the life of a junkie whore." He stroked the brush gently across her cheeks, flicking it with all the care of an artist applying master brushstrokes, his purple gaze thoughtful. "_He_ would even if _he_ didn't know that I killed you. But it will make it worse for _him_. _He'll_ blame _himself_ you know. One more life _he_ failed to save, claimed by _Moi_. Makes me feel positively giddy as a schoolgirl to think of it… heh."

He finished with the blush and moved onto eye shadow, a blueish purple straight out of the seventies. She flinched as the delicate brush came closer and he clucked his tongue and smiled. She squeezed her eyes shut.

"I feel like we're at a slumber party." He informed her cheerfully. The brush was cold on her eyelids, the eye shadow he was using was some sort of crème one. She could feel it gliding on thickly. "You know, you have beautiful hair. Quite unusual, so long and so fine and coloured the way it is. It adds the final touch of tragedy to your pitiful little presence. The first thing anyone would notice about you. 'My, how beautiful', they muse and then they notice the rest of you. 'Aw' they think and look away. Or maybe they stare. Tell me, honey, do people stare at you?"

She swallowed hard. Her throat was sore and swollen. She sucked in air through her nostrils and let it stream out of her mouth.

"Yes."

He chuckled. "I once shot a _beautiful_ redhead. Not to kill, you understand. She's in a wheelchair now. Will be for life. "

She hiccoughed with the effort to hold down the tears. Joker moved on to eyeliner, a liquid one, wetly outlining her sunken eyes. He leant in closer, the lapels of his coat brushing against her breast bone, his breath tickling her neck. "How do you feel when people stare at you?"

"Angry." She jerked suddenly at her restraints. "Pissed off."

He finished with her eyes and she opened them to see The Joker smiling at her, his teeth huge and white in his long face. He nodded at her.

"You make them feel better about themselves. That's your purpose in life, of course."

Rage was prickling hot and sharp beneath her sternum. She wanted to scream. A tube of scarlet lipstick was heading towards her face. She hissed and struggled but Joker simply grabbed her head and held her still, smoothing the colour over her lips with his other hand.

"Lotta fight in you. You're just dying to rip me apart, aren't you?" He was giggling. "It's going to be fun to break you. More fun than I expected. Because you're not going to make it easy for me, are you?" He finished the lipstick and planted a sudden, unexpected kiss on her rouged cheek. His lips were icy. "Fight as much as you like, sweetheart. That's what we're really here for. Your _death_ – well, that is all for _him_, I admit. The _real_ fun is everything it will take to get us there. You're a gift, sent to me tonight, when all I faced was an evening alone doing the same old thing. Nights like these, I usually ring a party line. Oh yes. Even I get lonely. And the sorts of people who phone those lines are remarkably easy to talk into offing themselves. It takes a couple of hours and a delicate hand, but I almost always get there, in the end. Now, don't cry, you'll ruin your makeup."

She hadn't even realised the tears had welled in her eyes.

His long arm reached out and replaced the makeup box on the cart, then undraped something that was slung over his other arm; she hadn't noticed it before – a long, dark length of fabric. He lifted it to her head and began to fit it over her face, arranging it fussily, tucking the rest of it down behind her, reaching below her arms to tug it out. It slid down with a soft whispering sound around her back and buttocks, tickling the backs of her thighs, clung to the top-half of her face, two shaped holes cut for her eyes.

"But I really prefer the immediacy and intimacy of real contact." He reached over to the cart again and picked up some sort of belt, it clinking against itself as he fitted it around her waist, cold and metallic. "Oh dear, you are _very_ thin, aren't you?" The belt sagged on her hips, it was far too big. "I might have to nail it on… hrm, that seems to be working." He'd lifted it to rest just above her hipbones. She was suddenly unable to bear the stark whiteness of the room, rolled her eyes to the ceiling, where she could see, sprayed out across it, another streak of rust-red. She shut her eyes tightly again.

Joker fiddled with the restraints on one ankle. "You've been out for almost two hours." He informed her. "Coupled with the effects of my little gas on your central nervous system and your own considerable lack of strength and struggling will be pointless. Still, give it a try if you like."

She didn't bother. While he was busy putting her feet in some sort of boot, she was clicking dully over what she knew about him. It had been so long since she'd watched the news or really read a newspaper, and even when she had she'd never paid that much attention to news outside of New York. Of course, she knew about him. _Everyone_ did. But he rarely left Gotham, and even though Gotham was so close to New York, it never had any effect on her. He seemed so distant, here, so beyond anything in her reality, like a story. Yet here he was, all too real, and here she was, at his mercy.

When he finished with the boots he slid her arms into yellow gloves, loosening the ropes just enough to push the fabric beneath them. "I could've done this while you were unconscious." He acknowledged. "But I thought you'd like to watch. Now. What do you think?"

He stepped back, revealing the mirror to her again. Her face was made up like a seventies porn star, one long streak of mascara down her right cheek, her lips ridiculously swollen beneath the thickly-applied lipstick, her eyelids a vivid purple. The boots were yellow, to match the long gloves. Around her waist was a linked metal belt, and over her head was a long cape and cowl, the cowl ending in two pointed ears, the cape meeting above her breast with a yellow disc, upon which was the insignia of a bat.

She coughed. "You really are obsessed with him, aren't you?"

Joker's mouth pulled downwards into a terrible frown, his brows furrowing together thunderously over his eyes. _Maybe she could goad him into killing her quickly…_

But a second later his expression changed again and he was grinning once more.

"I like you."

Somehow, the grin was more chilling than the frown had been.

A sudden trail of snot ran out her nose and hit her upper lip. She snuffled, darted her gaze to the cart, saw the cigarettes scattered over it. An overwhelming need for one consumed her, making her feel positively giddy.

"May I please have a cigarette?" she said and he laughed.

"Manners, now. Where's that sailor's mouth of yours gone to?" But he obliged, plucking one up with his long, thin fingers and placing it between her lips, lighting it with the butane torch that had been obscured by the tens unit. She felt the flare singe her eyebrows but didn't react, too busy sucking back on the stick.

She sucked in a full three-quarters of it and held it in her lungs for as long as she could stand, relishing the taste of the nicotine in her mouth, the fullness in her lungs and the way her brain felt suddenly light as air, feeling her eyelids flutter feverishly.

Joker removed the cigarette from her mouth and looked at its glowing tip, then at her.

Suddenly he rammed the butt of it into the hollow of her throat

She screamed. She couldn't help it. She opened her mouth and the smoke streamed out of it, accompanied by her pained cry. It had been so unexpected and so savage.

Joker grinned as he ground the cigarette out on her throat, then dropped the butt to the tiled floor and licked the small circle of charred flesh on her neck. It stung.

She was coughing and spluttering then, a wrenching pain contorting her lungs, burning up through her throat.

"I bet you're just aching for a hit, aren't you." He said knowingly. "It's going to really slam you soon, isn't it. The need. You'll be going crazy for it, sweating and puking, every nerve yammering for numbness as your muscles cramp up. I'll do my very best to distract you from it, precious. You were telling me how pissed off you were that people stare at you."

It was hard to keep up with him. He kept jumping topics. His talking about a hit had made her think of the heroin in a tight little packet in her bag, wherever that was. Had made her think of fixing a hit and shooting up, nodding out, the sheer unforgiving bliss of it flooding her veins and sending her spiralling into unreality. It was hard to stay in touch with what he was saying, with thoughts like that swimming in her head. Did he know?

"But can you blame them for staring at you?" He continued. "You are positively garish. You are all the things they're afraid of becoming, all the things they fear their children will become. Utterly distorted and degraded by life, wrung out, strung out and left to flutter uselessly and dry on the wire. You remind them how pointless their own lives are, how meaningless, how close they are to you, how there's not much more between you and them than one bad day. "

He was getting to her, despite herself. It was the pain, the rising tug of need, the shock of her capture, the vulnerability of her situation, with the mirror right _there_ and the light above so very fucking bright –

"But you make them feel better, anyway. Because they haven't had that bad day yet. But you have. Because when life is really getting them down, they can look at you and feel… pity." She choked and her eyes stung as mascara and eyeliner went running into them. His voice was so surprisingly soft, smooth as cream and utterly without doubt. It mocked her. "Which they laughingly call compassion. Yes, they can feel pity, and relief, that no matter how worthless they are, how utterly vacuous and empty their life is, at least they're not _you_."

"FUCK YOU!" she screamed, lurching against her restraints so savagely she felt a muscle in her arm tear a little, the skin on her wrists ripping open like rice paper against the coarse rope.

The Joker tsked and picked up a cable with a little jagged-toothed clamp on the end.

"There's that fighting spirit. But come now, you're not unintelligent. Let's lose the potty-mouth, hrm?"

He flicked a switch on the tens unit and touched the cable to one of her nipples. A vicious current ran through her body, and she jerked and twitched, a bitter acrid smell filling her nostrils as her skin smoked, her teeth rattling in her head. One of them came loose.

Then she did wet herself.

Joker laughed, that manic cackle echoing softly off the tiles and bouncing around her head. She continued to convulse when he shut the current off, her muscles feeling like jelly. The pain had been so pure it almost was not pain; something that had gripped her and completely held her in its thrall, rendering her absolutely helpless. It was uncomfortably close to the constriction of being high.

"But the fact is, you _are_ truth. You're more honest, truer, more real than any of them could ever hope to be. They try to make their lives mean something, you just limp on in a pathetic struggle for survival, renting your body out to fat-sweating vile hypocrites with wives and kiddies at home, blowing it all on chemicals that never last long enough." Try as she might, she could not block out the sound of his voice, it was clear as a bell inside her ears even as the rest of her lurched and was blunted by the quivering of her muscles. He had pressed himself against her, absorbing the persistent tremble that racked her into his own body, his hands upon hers. "No one knows the truth like a whore. No one sees humanity in its most dark and depraved state, slobbering and feeding on itself, vicious, cruel and without pity, in quite the same way a whore does." He ran his hands down her arms and over her chest, another caress sweet and vile in its tenderness. "But the frail human spirit was not built to cope with such an assault. Tell me, do you shoot up to dull the memories of all the disgusting, pawing creeps who ask you to call them Daddy, or does it just make it easier to take a few more?"

He stepped back and reached over to the cart yet again, picking up a packet of sewing needles. He slipped one out and held her face still, letting her watch the light reflect off the shining steel point, then carefully fixed the needle into the skin of her upper lip. It stung like white fire, sharp and smarting.

"When the night is finished and you're left with nothing but a wad of filthy cash and a cocktail running down your legs, does the hit make it all worthwhile, or does it just let you forget long enough you're able to get up again the next night?" Another needle went into her lip, and another and the pain was so bitter she was unable to do anything but whimper, feeling a swollen sort of numbness spread through her face. She held herself utterly still as The Joker ran a finger softly along the edges of the needles, making them twinge. The ache along her arms and shoulders had become so consistent it was almost a part of her, the sting in her mouth evolving to a steady throbbing as he stepped back and raised a green eyebrow at her.

"Tell me. Tell Uncy Joker all about it. How pathetic your life is. " Even her breath was unbearable against the tenderised flesh of her lip and she whistled it in and out through her nose. He shook his head at her, then picked up a nail gun. "If you're not going to talk, I can persuade you. You're tough, but I've got imagination. It won't take too long. I want to hear it all. I want to hear about your worst nightmare, what haunts you and has driven you to where you are now. Did your teen dream blow to smithereens in a chicken race while you watched? Were you gang-banged by the football team? Did Daddy have boundary issues while you were growing up?"

She couldn't help it. She laughed.

It hurt. But she couldn't keep it down. She let her head flop back against the bench and her eyes roll as she chuckled, feeling the ache in her wrists and ankles and face from the gentle vibrations of her body

Joker's reaction was as close to astonishment as she thought he was capable of. His eyes widened slightly and his brows disappeared into his hairline.

"Reeeaally?" He enquired, intrigued. She continued to laugh, it fading out to a silent tremor along her restrained form. Joker put the nail gun down and picked up a razor blade instead, the light reflecting off it like a wink. "Care to share the joke?"

"You've picked the wrong girl," she told him, her voice lisping as the needlepoints jabbed her top gum with every word she spoke. "Oh my life is pathetic all right. Not why you think, though. No. Everything I do – ha – you want to know my worst nightmare, is that what you said?"

He leaned towards her a little, his head coming closer down to hers. He was so tall.

"Tell me." He said and licked his lips.

Her head felt suddenly heavy on her neck, her gaze blotting out again. "Could you… take the pins out… it's difficult…"

"Oh, of course," He was suddenly courteous and she realised her laughter had got his interest in a way her screams couldn't, amusing as he might find them. Her punctured flesh burned as he withdrew the three needles, a hot wetness spilling down over her teeth and mouth, blood in three currents. She gasped, squeezed her eyes shut again and felt unconsciousness hover. Something abruptly warm spilled over her face, burning in the wounds on her mouth like acid.

She sputtered and coughed, then realised the liquid was gin. Opening her eyes once more she saw it was her gin, that Joker must've retrieved it from her bag. He smiled, his lips pressed shut, his eyes lit with that deadly mirth and proffered the bottle toward her mouth again. She nodded and he lifted it to her lips, tipping it up so that the liquor spilt onto her tongue and she gulped it down greedily. It rubbed her throat raw but pooled comfortingly in her belly.

Joker recapped the bottle and cocked his head to one side. "You were saying?"

She licked her swollen lips, tasting the strange combination of blood, alcohol and lipstick and nodded. "My worst nightmare. The worst thing I could ever imagine – ever dream of – is – ha. The thing I am most afraid of is never getting another hit. Of drying up. Of not being able to score. If you want to know what haunts me when it gets to the end of a long night – it's of going to my dealer and being told she's got nothing for me. Of having to look for it. Of having to share it. Having to give it up. Going without it." She let out a long gust of breath and let her head loll forward. "Even now I'm thinking about it, even here. If you really wanted to torture me, you'd get what's in my bag and destroy it in front of me." She shuddered at the thought, even as need lapped the edges of her mind, and laughed a little.

Joker was contemplating her with half-lidded eyes, slightly glazed. She forced herself to meet his gaze, locking her eyes onto his purple ones.

"Nothing I do matters." She told him, her voice low but steady. "Because everything I do is to get my hands on smack. And _that's_ all that matters."

He'd folded one arm across his lean torso, razor blade dangling careless from his long fingers. He was resting the other elbow upon that folded arm, fist held up to his mouth, looking at her with a quiet, contemplative half-smile.

He took a step toward her and her pulse sped up.

"_Nothing_?" he hissed curiously and she jerked her head.

"Just a – means to – an end." She breathed.

Nothing.


	4. Chapter 4

**FOUR**

"The truth? Is that what you want." She raised her voice a little, heard it echo off the tiles. Joker's brows furrowed downwards as his close-mouthed grin widened.

"_Dying_ to hear it." He sneered and she laughed again.

"The truth is I was your typical spoiled little upper middle class white kid. I got everything I wanted and that was the problem. So I started shooting up when I was thirteen. When I was fourteen and got sick of the interventions I hitched a ride to NYC exchanging blowjobs. And been there ever since. It never mattered to me, doing tricks. It was the easiest way to get cash. And cash got me junk. You gotta understand, every time I look at something, I'm workin' out how I can turn it into smack. That's the truth."

"How delightfully depraved." He sounded almost as if he approved, and began jiggling the razor blade casually in his hand. But he seemed not to notice it, raking his eyes up and down her prone form thoughtfully, and she realised she had his attention. She had not turned out to be what he'd hoped for – he was not going to be able to torture her by rubbing her own hopelessness in. Now he was wondering what he _could_ do with her – what she could be for him and a wave of desperate terror tingled through her.

So long as she was talking, he wasn't _doing_ anything.

"I've done lots of rotten things." She said, squaring her chin, slightly breathless. "But it doesn't matter to me. I do what I need to. I'm the unrepentant junkie. I'm not here because I've fallen. I'm here because I've walked. I stay by choice. Lots of people have tried to save me, but I've fucked them all. That's me. That's the truth."

Perhaps the truth would kill her quicker. She wanted this to be over. Her mind was loping crazily over the horror he was promising her, the wretched anonymity and loneliness of it. Not like the other times, when someone had wanted her dead, when there was something personal in it.

With this freak – there was nothing. _Nothing _except that he was bored and she was there. No grudge, no reason, no motive. He hadn't even asked her name. She didn't even exist in his reality except as this object he could play with and then she'd be dumped. And for what? Nothing. Nothing at all. She was a fucking _joke_ to him.

A joke.

_A joke…_

"I always knew this is how it'd end for me, or something pretty much like it." She spoke up again, causing him to raise his brows once more and fresh blood to flow down her face. "Actually, I gotta say, this way is definitely better. I mean, any street girl can get her throat slit in an alleyway by a loony mug, but not many can say they've been put out of commission by the likes of you. "

He actually looked pleased. "So glad you feel that way." He made her a little bow. "My pleasure to lift you from the pit of mundanity. But now, we really have to move on with things. I'm afraid you're not going to be quite as interesting as I thought, but I'm sure you'll still put up a good fight. Don't worry, dearest. I'm going to get what I want out of you, sooner or later. Even if I have to content myself with merely making you scream." He lifted the razor blade again, smirking and came up close to her. She swooned, twitched. Her arms had gone numb and it was getting difficult to breathe and strangely, the tiles beyond The Joker's shoulder were beginning to sway and swim, blurring together.

"What do you want?" she breathed desperately. "That – you can't – surmise? I've wasted - life, left my potential - unfulfilled – and I just don't care - broke my parents' heart."

Joker swished the razor through the air a couple of times and her skin tingled in anticipation, a sensation like pins and needles flooding her flesh, prickling and unpleasant. She wanted a hit. It was tugging at her, like a hook that had snagged her skin, the first swelling need for a dose.

"I just bet you did." His grin was vicious. "I do so hope they find out what's become of you. Some joke on them, eh?"

He steadied the razor, his lips parted as he drew up close to her, tracing imaginary lines a hair's breadth from her tiny breast. She wheezed and took a chance.

"The uh – ultimate – ah punch line to all - the little laughs I been pullin' on them - the last ten years." She was no longer entirely sure what she was saying, the words springing automatically to her lips, spilling out between the blood and makeup.

"Oh really? Like what." The razor blade paused, hovering inches from her flesh. "Tell me something." His voice was alert and interested. She'd managed to catch his attention again. She swallowed. Her throat was sore and her heart was hammering painfully against her breastbone. She dug into her memories, probed around in the cotton wool of her mind, to find something that might satisfy him.

"I took my mother's engagement ring," she said finally. "and hocked it. Not even for its full value, I don't think. At the time, I was working in a bookstore on weekends. Blowing everything on smack. It wasn't enough anymore. My doses were getting bigger. It was a diamond – the ring – half carat – I knew I could get a lot. Enough. Took it one afternoon, ducked outta school and came home. She was out. Everyone was out. Took it. Pawned it. Got – got more smack than I'd ever had before. Finished it in less than a month."

Joker was laughing, not the mad hyena bray that had so chilled her, but an amused little chuckle under his breath.

"Did she ever find out?" He asked her and she breathed in painfully.

"Yeah," she admitted.

His eyes lit up and he leant a little closer. "Did you see her face when she did?"

She shook her head, no. "I was long gone by then. For a long time she thought she'd lost it."

Joker pouted. "What a shame. Are you sorry?"

She paused for a moment, letting the question sink in. Then she started laughing herself. The motion woke her arms up a little, stretching the muscles taut so that they burned.

"No." And there were tears streaming down her cheeks. "I'm not. I think I was – once, before. But. It was – I was desperate. I couldn't think of any other way. It was do that or go without smack. There wasn't really a choice."

Joker nodded sagely, dropping the hand holding the razor blade to his side. "Oh yes there was. I think you know that. But it was one you couldn't bear. That's cute."

There was a pause, a moment of silence between them, and she could hear the hum of the tens unit. Joker walked out of her line of sight, behind the gurney she was on and returned a moment later, dragging a chair. He arranged it in front of her and sat down, crossing one leg over the other and fussily arranging his coat tails. Sitting down, his head was in line with her shoulders. He fingered the razor's blade with one hand, then flicked his gaze to hers.

"Let's play a game." He said. "For as long as you keep me interested, I won't play with my toys. Do you like the sound of that, sweet cheeks?"

He suddenly flicked his wrist, the razor blade spinning through the air faster than she could see, embedding itself into the wood she lay on, mere inches from her ribcage.

She took a great shuddering breath and nodded. "Suits me."

He made a delicate gesture with his fingertips. "Well then."

She coughed, cast her mind around, feeling the muscles of her arms twitch, wondering where to start. His brows creased a little and his fingertips began to drum upon one knee and she launched into the first thing that entered her head:

"There was this time – it was the middle of a bad winter – really bad, fucking freezing. There was no business. Nothing at all. The streets were empty, no one dared come out. I'd huddle on the corner in a great big overcoat hour after hour, trying to get a job. I'd go into the bars and clubs but they'd kick me out, I couldn't pull there, not when there were girls working the tables who had makeup and tits and who didn't reek of junkie sweat. I was starting to withdraw, puking on the pavement." She was rushing, the words spilling out over each other, her gaze fixed towards her left hip, not daring to look and see how interested he was. "There was this relief worker out there, handing out supplies and shit, food and blankets and stuff, yannow, the usual sorta thing and I was starting to puke by then; looked like Hell, looked like death. I dunno, I don't think I woulda survived that winter if I couldn't get a hit. My body woulda gone into shock." Slowly, the relief worker's face drifted up out of the fog of memory, warm, plump, friendly little thing, sandy-brown hair, smelling of damp wool. "Anyway she offers me food and I say no, just money, please just money. I gotta fix or I'm gonna die. She says, I'll take you to your family; I don't got none I tell her, she says I'll take you to rehab; I say I can't my pimp is waitin' for me – I didn't have a pimp, but I sure as hell didn't wanna go to rehab – I say he's gonna kick the shit out of me if I go home empty handed and I gotta fix or I'm gonna be sick. Just fifty bucks, lady please." She flicked her eyes up towards Joker, who was leaning back in his chair, half-smiling. He met her gaze and she looked away again. "She takes pity on me. She says I can't give you money for smack, but how about I get you fixed up for methadone. And the wheels are turnin' and I say, okay that's a decent compromise. So she takes me back to a shelter, the emergency doctor, gets me a methadone prescription and then fills the thing at a chemist, pays for it herself and gives it to me, like three weeks worth of 'done, all in one hit. And she gives me a hug and tells me to take care and come in and see her and let her know how I'm going and I say thanks you're real angel, thanks so much I really appreciate this, and I'm gonna stick to it, don't worry about that. You've saved my life, honey. And she's smiling at me and I know she thinks she's made a difference. So I wave her goodbye. Then I go out, I sell the 'done and use the money to buy smack. "

"Heh." Said The Joker.

Amber sniffed. "Three week worth of 'done, I got a week's worth of smack for it. I stole blankets from a shelter, found myself a squat and stayed there, riding out the cold chasin' the white rabbit."

"And did you keep your promise to go in and visit the Saint?" he enquired and she shook her head, the back of her neck aching.

"Nope. Never bothered. I was – " and she hesitated. She felt him lean forward in his chair, crossing his hands on his knees. " – I was pissed off at her. For not just giving me the money in the first place. Thought – who the fuck she think she is? What right does she have – I mean, if she couldn't see how fuckin' sick I was – goddamn go-gooder. So I – I enjoyed it. Enjoyed doing it. It made me laugh to do it. Serves her right."

She trailed to an end and Joker sat back again, crossing his leg once more.

"Hrmf." He sniffed. "Disgusting, but mundane. Haven't you got anything better?" And he reached over to the cart and picked up a small bone saw, fingering its teeth gently. Amber's heart began a brisk and painful rat-a-tat against her ribs.

"What's the difference between an alcoholic and a junkie?" She blurted out wildly. He cocked his head to one side and rested the saw in his lap.

"Do tell."

"An alcoholic will steal your wallet and blame the junkie. The junkie will steal your wallet and help you look for it."

He cackled at that and his grip on the saw relaxed. Relieved, she searched for another tale.

"I was living with this guy. He didn't use. He was a nice guy. Big and tall and round. Like a teddy bear. Looked scary but was really a lamb. Could do anythin' to him, he didn't care none. He took me in, let me live with him rent-free. He was a client, at first, but he picked me up out of the gutter like a lost kitten." She clenched her fists and released them again, trying to get some feeling going in her hands. "Fed me, clothed me, you know the full Jesus shtick. He was so tolerant. So accepting. I'd go out all night and work, come back in the morning and shoot up, spend the whole day passed out and drooling on the pillow. And he'd just say – you be careful out there tonight. Every fucking night. You be careful out there tonight. Do you want me to bring you anythin', he'd say, want me to bring you a late supper. It'd be like, don't you notice I never fucking eat? But he'd always say I'll bring you something hot out there. A hot meal will keep you goin'. And I'd wake up and he'd have cleaned up the mess around me. Thrown out the old fits. Put a clean one down, fresh water, all of it just ready and waiting. And then you be careful out there tonight. Never a fucking question. Anyway, he went away for a month one time, left me in charge of his place. I dunno, some sort of business thing. I never paid that much attention. I was real sick at the time. I have Hep C, you know…"

Joker rolled his eyes. "Of course you do. That's almost crossing the line from perfection to cliché."

She hurried on. "Anyway he was gone and left me the place. I didn't know it then but I guess that's why I was so fucking sick. Couldn't get out. Couldn't earn. Couldn't buy smack. I held out for about a day. Maybe day and a half. I was so bloody sick, I mean even before withdrawal started I was puking everything up, could barely move. Just managed to reach the phone." She remembered that week, curled into a ball on the threadbare carpet of his den, a rug around her shivering shoulders, spitting up mouthfuls of bile telling herself again and again she'd get up and go out to work in five minutes. And the phone was just there – an arm's reach away.

"Didn't take me long. By the third week I'd cleaned him out. All his furniture, his equipment, stereo, TV, DVDs, CDs, you name it I'd sold it or swapped it for smack. When I realised he was coming back in a few days I was stoned enough to walk around and I beat it. Just left. "

Joker was tittering softly under his breath. "Do you regret it?" His eyes gleamed as he waited for her answer and suddenly she got the strength to square her shoulders and lift her chin up.

"Nope." She said flatly. "I think it's his own damn fault for trusting a junkie. "

Joker cackled again, a peal of hellish bells that made her shiver.

Time passed, but she didn't notice its passage. She dredged up stories, half-forgotten, perhaps half-fabricated, of every sordid little event she'd ever been involved in.

And all the while The Joker chuckled, or tittered, or laughed or guffawed. If it was a real belly laugh, he'd light her a cigarette and let her inhale, or hold the gin up to her lips, laughing as it ran down her chin. At one point, he even got her gear out of her bag and mixed her up a tiny hit, giggling over the raw hunger that consumed her face, the way she strained at her restraints and moaned as the needlepoint came closer to her. He teased her for a moment, waving it beneath her nose, then pushed her chin up, head back against the gurney, exposing her throat.

"I'll have to shoot this into your neck." He whispered and she twitched.

He leaned in close to do it, bending down so that his head was level with hers, strands of his hair brushing her cheek. This close she could see every vein that coursed through his eyeball, the unnatural shine to his purple iris and the pitiless, empty black pits of his pupils, pinned and tiny as if he were stoned as well.

He watched keenly as she shuddered beneath the bliss of the drug flooding her veins and ran a finger down her chin, her neck, over her breast bone and the length of her torso, coming to a stop just above her bellybutton, eliciting a perverse shiver from her flesh.

But if he only chuckled, he'd reach for one of his toys and advance upon her, grinning maniacally, a look of vicious excitement in his eyes. Her skin burned, and broke and bled, her muscles contorted and spasmed and fluids oozed. The electric shocks were the worst, rocketing through her body like a bitch-slap from God, her head slamming repeatedly against the gurney.

What made it worse was that every thing he did to her he made into an act of intense intimacy. The delicacy and care with which he administered his little tortures, the caressing movements of his hands, the smile he'd lock her gaze with, as though he were sharing some special, secret joke with her, the closeness of him, as though he was absorbing her pain and terror into his own body, feeding upon it. Sometimes, as she was recounting some event, he would pick up something sharp or heavy and blunt, and finger it, running his hand over it sensually and lifting his eyes to hers, something obscene and vulgar in the depths of his gaze. She wasn't sure if he was getting off on it, or not. It was almost impossible to tell with him, but it was certain he was getting some sort of sordid enjoyment from it.

"I love the way you look at me." He murmured once, his voice slightly teasing. "You're trying so hard to be fearless. There's such defiance there, so much resistance, but you can't hide it. Not from me. Deep down in the nugget of those baby blues I can see it. Terror." His voice a hot whisper on her throat, raising bumps along her flesh, her nipples hardening with a tingle beneath the hot gust of his words, her insides quivering. "You've seen and done it all, I can tell. Seen and done it all – except me. You didn't even know you could still feel this way, did you? Oh no, no, don't shut your eyes, baby. Don't shut me out. I so love to see myself reflected there."

And she was aware, always aware, it could've been much worse. There were plenty of things on the little cart that he wasn't using.

At one point, when she was barely halfway through a reminiscence about robbing the body of a dead homeless guy, he suddenly reached over and broke one of her fingers. She screamed and sagged against her restraints, her arm suddenly violently awake.

"Sorry", he said easily, "I was just getting a bit bored."

After that she struggled to keep it lively, and quick.


	5. Chapter 5

**FIVE**

She was vaguely aware she was going into shock, her head light and almost detached from the rest of her, her body at once utterly numb and a mess of crawling sensations, the slightest shifting causing a spasm in her prone muscles, or the sting in her lips to flare up again. The multitude of burns and cuts all over her alternatively prickled and throbbed or faded out altogether.

"When I first began – I was just a kid, you know?" By then she had warmed up, got a sense of delivery going. "I didn't look like I do now. I was kinda cute. I went to a private school. Had a uniform. Took it with me when I left home, used to wear it when I was on the game. Call in the worst of the lot. What you were saying, before, about all those sick fucks, well I saw 'em all. The most disgusting and depraved you can imagine. But can you – can you imagine the way their eyes lit up when they saw me, standing there on that corner, in my little pleated school skirt?"

Joker nodded slightly, eyes intent on her and grinning, his lips pressed tight shut. "They thought all their Christmases had come at once."

She snorted. "Right. I mean, you could see I wasn't faking it. I was the real deal. Put my hair in plaits, two long ones. White socks, all the way up the knee." She couldn't help but chuckle at the thought. "God, the parade of cars was never ending. People think it's an anomaly – a perversion. I lost that delusion real quick. Never been as busy since I tossed that uniform and got a bit older. " Joker snickered and abruptly stood, taking a cigarette from off the cart and placing it between her lips, lighting it once more with the torch. "Thanks." She drew in and blew it out of the corner of her mouth. "Anyway, these guys – they'd be tremblin', you know, so damn excited they could barely speak. Stammering and choking on their words. They'd hardly know what to do with themselves. They were easy. I'd say – let's go to your place, or let's get a room. And they'd do it, you know? I'd say – let's have a drink – you got some champagne? Let's have a drink. I'm not old enough to drink, I wanna have a drink – " Joker cackled and she sniggered too. "Come on, let's have a drink. And they'd get me one. And while there were in the shower I'm pop a couple of roofies in their glasses. When they passed out, I'd take them for everything they had on them – more if it was their place –and high tail it."

Joker threw his head back and roared with laughter, the most uproarious he'd been yet, slapping one knee with his hand.

"That's delightful!" he exclaimed. "That's inspired! Tell me another!"

She scrambled about for something similar. "Before I started working," she fumbled onwards, "I had this friend and her Dad, her Dad was a real fucking pervert. You could tell, you know, from the way he looked at you. He was into the young girls. Maybe he was into my friend, I don't know, she never said. But I used to work in a bookstore and it just didn't pay enough for me to get what I needed. So… so I, this one time – well I started dropping hints you know, nothing too over the top, just enough to get him thinking. To get him all het up. And then – I uh – I arranged it so that – uh – "

"Don't get shy on me now, toots." Joker whispered and a shudder coursed through her at how creepily probing his hard, cold eyes were.

"I fucked him." She said desperately, "I got him over to my place on some pretence, I don't know, I don't think I even really remember. And he was disgusting," she added almost as an afterthought. She paused, her memories flickering across her mind's eye like an old filmstrip. Then she grinned. "But what he didn't know was that I filmed the whole thing. After that, he was my personal cookie jar. I told him if he didn't give me whatever money I asked for, I'd send it to his wife. And the cops. I wasn't so bad," she said, lost in her thoughts. "I never asked that much. Just a hundred a week or so. Was enough, back then." Then, suddenly helpless, she broke into a fit of giggles. "When I left town I sent the video to his wife anyway."

Joker laughed with her, lifting his arms up to lace his fingers together behind his head. "I don't think I need to ask if you're sorry about that one."

After that he stopped touching his toys and kept his eyes on her, the grin never leaving his face. There was a cold sweat upon her body but the small amount of heroin in her system was keeping her steady, even through the layer of numbness slowly spreading over her body.

"Another time," she'd lost track of what she'd told him by then, of how far she'd gone, how long they'd been there. "This guy – I got caught up in – got caught up with these – rival gangs," she wasn't sure how to explain Raphael as Nightwatcher, the thugs who'd come after her to get to him. "and these – these fuckers – tried to use me to kill this guy I was – was with – and they took me and beat me and raped me and they were going to kill me. They were going to cap me in front of my guy. But he took them by surprise. And so I – I had one of my fits and I sucked out a big draw of my blood and stuck it into one of them. I hope he lived," she finished viciously, "I hope he lived and he has Hep C now and he can't clear it and it eats his fuckin' liver up – I'm not sorry. No I'd do it again. I did it before too, spat in this guy's eyes, a big mouthful of blood. I could do it to you," she said with reckless savagery, rolling her eyes in Joker's direction. He'd spun the chair around and was sitting on it backwards, arms folded over the back of it. He merely smiled toothily.

"It's a blood borne virus." He said patiently. "What good would that do? Though I appreciate using it as a fear tactic on the ignorant. You're like an animal aren't you?"

"I brained another guy," she said, hurtling onwards, the brightness of the room suddenly irritating, her body twitching restlessly, struggling against the ropes though they wouldn't budge, desperate to move, wanting to kick out and bite as she remembered Doctor Phillip Andrews. "I drove a chisel into his head. He's a vegetable now. He will be forever. He deserved it. I'm happy I did it. I'd do it again, and again. I'm glad he didn't die." She finished, panting a little, suddenly feeling unbearably warm in the cramped air of the small room, the scent of her own blood drifting up to mingle with the metallic tinge that hovered around them like a cloud.

The Joker had stopped laughing, but he didn't look bored. He regarded her thoughtfully for a long moment. "You know what makes you different, doll face?" he said finally. "Most junkies out there are trapped in a never-ending web of shame, and self-disgust, despising themselves with everything they've got and using the drugs to help them along. It helps to numb out their pathetic existence, but it also justifies those overwhelming waves of self-loathing. They can wallow in it. It's cause and effect, ad nauseum. It's suicide, dragged out over months and years. That's what I thought you'd give me tonight. Entertaining, for a short while, but ultimately rather ordinary. But you – why, you're almost proud of it, aren't you? There's this hint of pride in your voice as you share your sorry tales, no tinge of regret or remorse, an almost bestial sense of pleasure in your recollections. You do what you must to survive, and for you survival means staying high, and you accept that as your calling. When you speak of your drug, you make it sound like a devotion. It's not your addiction, it's your religion, and you'll sacrifice what you must to continue your worship."

She breathed out and let her body relax against the gurney. "Yes. You're right."

"Don't interrupt." He snapped, glowering and lurching himself forward so that two legs of the chair lifted above the tiles. "I _know_ I'm right."

He stood up, flicked his tail coats out so they fanned up briefly behind him before settling back down, stepped over to the cart.

"Now." He said. "I want to know what the worst thing you've ever done was. The absolute worst, most rotten, vile and depraved thing you've ever done." He'd picked up a long iron rod with some sort of disc at the end. "Forget all this nonsense about stealing, and deceiving people and running away. I don't even care if you've fucked a dog, I don't believe you do either." He switched on the butane torch and held it to the disc. A branding iron, she realised. "Tell me the _real_ stinker. The sick stench dogging your heels. The one that threatens your cloudy dreams with its noxiousness. The one you actually _feel. _I know you've got one. I want to hear it. Come on." The end of the iron slowly began to heat, turning first a dull red then steadily a glowing orange. She was unable to take her eyes off it, they watering in response to the glow, feeling the faint heat of it emanating across the room. Joker turned his attention back to her and showed her his teeth in a surprisingly benevolent smile.

"Don't hold out on me, honey."

Her eyes were stinging and she blinked, feeling the faint prickle in the corners of them. She didn't have to search for this one. She knew straight away, it springing up in vivid technicolour as though it was yesterday, although she hadn't thought of it for years. She considered resisting, refusing, screaming at him again and fighting for it. She decided it wasn't worth the effort.

"It was right before I left home." She whispered, her voice dry and hoarse after the hours of talking, of screaming, of thirsting. "Not before I left Jersey though. No one knew. I'd managed to keep it secret up until then. No one knew. But I was changing, of course. My parents didn't know why. They thought I was coming down with something – glandular fever, or something. I was staying at home from school a couple of days, too stoned, too disinterested to go. My kid brother – he was just a toddler – he was sick one day. Just a runny nose, but my mom wanted to keep him home from playgroup, just in case. She had to go out and do the shopping. Asked me to keep an eye on him." She felt exhausted suddenly, like the effort of going on was beyond her ability, had stretched her will to its limit. She let her eyes fall shut, let her body weight drop, supported entirely by the ropes tying her down. "Of course, as soon as she was out of the house, I shot up and nodded out, right there on the couch in front of the TV. " She could remember it as though it had just happened, the smell of the leather couch in her nostrils, its cool stickiness against her face, her hair falling across her eyes and into her mouth, Spongebob Squarepants on the television, Benjy's strawberry curls blurring out as her eyes glazed over, the patio door wide open. "When I woke up he wasn't there. My brother. I came back then. Jumped up, raced outside. He was in the pool. " A prickling numbness ran through her, and even keeping her eyes shut was too difficult so she relaxed them, letting the lids roll back half-way, not bothering to focus her gaze on the sight of her sunken torso below her.

Joker leaned forward, pushing his face into her line of sight, his expression eager and hungry. "Was he dead?"

She flinched beneath the directness of the question, the way his tongue seemed to roll over the word _dead_, like he was savouring it.

"No." she didn't recognise her voice. It was blank and empty. "I got him out. Rang 911. Tried mouth to mouth. He didn't – die." The word hiccoughed through her lips. "But he was brain-damaged. I left a couple of days later. They never knew exactly what happened. I never told them. I've never told anyone."

Joker straightened up and she could hear his soft, hissing laughter as the numbness receded from her face, replaced with the heat of the tears that poured down her cheeks, scalding and stinging. She did not cry or gasp, her chest did not rise and fall, her shoulders did not shake. She simply hung there, limp and drained, and felt the hot flood of tears stain her cheeks.

Joker cupped her face in both his hands, and bent right down into her, pressing his nose against her cheek, the teeth of his smiling mouth slick and slightly wet on her jaw. He still had the iron in one hand and its cold metal handle was hard against her ear.

"There." He purred, his free hand stroking her hair gently. "I told you I'd get what I wanted out of you. Sooner or later." He kissed her, his lips cold fire, his mouth gulping her down, then ran his tongue up her cheek, licking off the mess of tears and mascara there. "And I enjoyed being your first, honey."

Then he stepped back and jammed the glowing end of the iron straight into the soft flesh of her belly.

All feeling in her body rushed into that point as though sucked there by the burning. It was as though the rest of her abandoned her, disintegrating and dropping away, leaving behind only that small circle of skin which sizzled and burned, filling the air with the scent of her own cooking flesh, charred and smoky.

She screamed with the last remaining vestiges of her voice, of her strength, of her will, the roar coming up from deep down in her core and exploding out of her mouth with a tremor to rival a volcanic eruption. She knew, in no conscious way, that scream had been waiting ten years.

The pain was just her excuse.

Then she passed out.


	6. Chapter 6

**SIX**

She came to with a start, something sharp and foul smelling beneath her nose. She didn't see what it was as Joker replaced it on the cart, pulling the cowl off of her head as he did so and tossing it against the tiled wall where it slid to the floor and slumped like a curled up spook. She swayed, a ringing in her ears, realised she was no longer tied to the bench, would've fallen except Joker grabbed her arm and hauled her upright.

"You needn't thank me," Joker said, his voice a dull bell echoing through the ringing. "I had a great time, really. You were quite unexpected, in the end. I'd say let's do it again sometime, but I think we've probably shared all we can, don't you sweetie?" He was pulling something down over her ears, something soft and scratchy. Her Cookie-Monster dress, the loveable monster with a wide-eyed grin on the front, a fistful of cookies. "Don't feel too used and abused, I think we really had a moment or two there. But when it's over, it's over." Joker pushed her down into the chair he'd been sitting on, and she raised a hand to her forehead, watching the room lurch crazily around her, blurring in and out like a tunnel of light, the bright blob of violet and green, orange and turquoise that was The Joker shimmering and flickering as he bent to shove her feet into her boots.

"Get up, get up," He snapped, spontaneously jittery and excited, a mess of jerky movement, yanking her to her feet. "Walk around, get some feeling in those legs back." He pushed her and she stumbled, her feet tripping clumsily as she struggled to obey, confused about what exactly was happening. He jerked her back towards him again and she lurched drunkenly, then he grabbed her hand and snapped her broken finger quickly back into place and she yelped, sudden sensation flooding back into her body.

She was awash with a thousand agonies, all of them creeping and crawling across her skin and headed straight towards her centre, the fiery knob on her belly. Her hand leapt automatically to it, then jerked back in alarm as her fingertips made contact. Even through the fabric the pain was raw.

"Now," Joker said briskly, reaching into his trouser pocket and withdrawing a dark purple leather wallet. "I've really never done this before. I'm not sure what's appropriate. Will this do?"

He thrust a wad of notes at her and she took them, her weakened fingers slipping off them several times before she concentrated enough strength to grip them. She had to squint to see them clearly, the intricate green and off-white design. She had no possible hope of counting in the state she was in, but as she fumbled through them the number in their top right hand corner swam and separated before drawing back together. One hundred. He'd given her a bunch of hundreds.

"Oh. That's very generous." She heard herself saying numbly. "Are you sure?"

He flapped his hands benevolently, dismissing her query. "Of course, of course, you crazy kid. You run along now. Go on. Get out of here! You've given me a good chuckle. Did I say thank you? Thank you!"

He chucked her under the chin and led her with a hand on her shoulder, kneading it gently, to the door in one corner of the tiled room, gallantly opening it for her, waving her out.

"Uh – thank you. " She said again, confused. Was she dead? But wouldn't he have to carry her out if that were the case? "Very kind of you."

"Don't ever change, now, you hear?" He said merrily, handing her her bag as she left the room, turning about confusedly in a long dark corridor. "It positively warms my heart to think of your wretched little soul out there, its ruthless war for self-gratification. What a nasty little slice of honesty you are. Not really the sort of thing I want to gift-wrap for _him _though. Better to have you out there making your own little contribution. Just keep on going to the left, follow it straight out. Toodles, sweet pea."

She followed his pointing finger down the corridor, feeling her way gingerly in the dark. Behind her his laughter faded into the darkness as he went back into the tiled room, shutting the door behind him.

After a few metres she came to a door, set into the wall and felt about for the handle. The knob was slippery in her hand and loose in its setting but after a moment of jiggling it gave way and opened outwards to admit a stream of pale golden light. It was morning.

She lifted a hand to her eyes, squinting in the new light. Directly in front of her was the glittering golden expanse of Gotham River. She was on The Hill Docks. Spinning around she saw that the building she'd emerged from was some sort of old factory, or storage warehouse, that there were dozens of them stretching out to either side, big industrial places looking out over the water, long finger wharves stretching out into the river running from the huge double doors set into their walls. She spun back around and stumbled over to the edge of the docks, following it along as she shivered, the pale morning sun doing little to warm her dimpled skin, her boots rubbing against the torn flesh of her ankles, bloody bracelets circling her wrists, the finger that had been broken a dark, mottled purple, to say nothing of the dozens of small cigarette burns and cuts and bruises that decorated her body.

When she finally stopped and turned back around to look where she had come, the warehouse she'd emerged from had blended into the row, perfectly invisible. She would never be able to pick it out again.

She let her legs give way beneath her, flopping down heavily onto her rear, swinging her feet out over the edge of the dock staring tippily down into the choppy black-green water below, swimming with foam and scum.

_I just lived through a night with The Joker. _She thought.

She jerked forward and a fountain of bile leapt out of her mouth, arcing in the air before plummeting into the water below.

_Holy shit._

The motion of puking awakened a thousand tiny pains across her body, her muscles tender and protesting, and one vicious ache on her stomach bright as sunshine. Gingerly, she lifted the hem of her dress and peeled it upwards. The cotton clung to the wound and she winced as she carefully pulled it off her sticky, charred flesh.

There, obscuring her belly button, seared into her flesh, was a stylised representation of The Joker's face, grinning venomously with eyes as dark and burned black as the ghoul's own were.

She let her dress fall back down and wiped her face, the back of her hand coming away smeared black and red. She fumbled in her bag for her bottle of gin, her trembling hands still finding it difficult to grip anything properly, and took a long, hard swig.

Then she stood up and began to negotiate her way through the maze of warehouses to find her way back towards the entwining streets of the city. She was going to grab the nearest cab she saw and direct it to the highway. She'd shoot up in the backseat and let herself blink out. The money Joker had given her should be enough.

Time to go back to New York. Time to find Raphael.

She took a few more shuddering gulps of her gin as the memory of his lewdly intimate touch and unashamedly probing gaze wiggled back into her consciousness, as the final moments of pain revisited her body, squeezing down on her heart so hard she thought it would rupture, of what she had shared with him, what she had let him see that no one else ever had, that he had that now, within his tightly closing white palm and would have it forever.

He'd been right. From the beginning, he'd known.

She was alive. But she hadn't survived.

-----

_Man, this turned out a lot different (and longer) than I thought. I was thinking to myself : 'no ordinary person could survive a night with The Joker if he didn't want you to.' Then I thought of Amber and began thinking… hrm… how _would_ she. And this idea presented itself._

_Originally, when it first occurred to me how Amber would survive a night with Mistah J, I planned for this to be quite an entertaining piece, ending up with Joker and Amber sharing a laugh over the outrageous things that she'd done. Her way of 'outsmarting' him if you will. But, as it turns out… no ordinary person _can_ survive a night with The Joker. _

_This is a lot darker than I wanted it to be. C'est la vie._

_Read some of Amber's other stories (accessible from my profile page) for some of the events she's talking about towards the end there. I'm aware the narrative does assume some previous knowledge of Amber. I hope it doesn't make it impossible for newcomers to engage with her._

_This was also a way of practicing writing The Joker, who is an incredibly difficult character to write well. I hope it pleases. _

_Remember from the outset he has decided Amber will eventually die, and the whole little night is enacted for his amusement during a period of boredom while he's undercover, so it's not intended for anyone else's benefit. I figured some of his behaviour would end up being a little different than it would be for a more public crime._

_This was so difficult to write. It's taken a lot outta me!_


End file.
